different format breaks the copyright so it's illegal shame because your argument does have some sense about it.

I don't see any moral or ethical problem in this circumstance, on the grounds that:

(a) if someone paid for it once then s/he'll be blowed if they pay for it again - it was an album, not a cinema ticket

(b) the original purchase of the album did far more good for the artist in helping get them some degree of fame & success at the time, than it will now (when they've presumably got a proper job instead)

I sleep at night, whether or not the copyright police do.

with mp3 compared to tapes is that you've changed the format from audio single to mp3 where as tape it's just audio to audio.

...that the way that Bittorrent works is that you're usually uploading bits of a file that you've already got, while you're still downloading the bits you need. So, you're not just replicating something you've already got, but you're distributing it to other people (even if you delete the torrent after it's finished downloading, rather than letting it seed).

That I have done this, on occasion. The way I see it is that I've paid for my 'copy', and I can only listen to one 'copy' at a time, so I've not really diddled anyone out of anything.

Of course, I know that the music industry in their ever-encompassing greed would see it differently, but I think that if it's a crime, it's way down the list as compared to someone illegally downloading something that they've never paid for in any alternative format...

All said and done, though, I still like to buy vinyl where possible as nothing else comes close... :)

(on another note: interesting to see that some contemporary vinyl releases also include coupons to download MP3 audio of the same album, which is a very sensible thing indeed IMHO).